The Pastoureaux spread the fear of insurrection that freezes the blood of the privileged in any era when the mob appears. Excommunicated by Pope John XXII, they were finally suppressed when he forbade...
The Kaiser was as close to the sick Tom-cat mood as he thought the Russians were. More cosmopolitan and more timid than the archetype Prussian, he had never actually wanted a general war. He wanted gr...
Nothing to learning for I have none; nothing to youth for I was old when I began; nothing to popularity for I was hated all round.… This is the modest truth and my friends at Rome call me more god tha...
To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup. When
Though writing in 1917, Mann was reflecting 1914, the year that was to be the German 1789, the establishment of the German idea in history, the enthronement of Kultur, the fulfillment of Germany’s his...
These private wars were fought by the knights with furious gusto and a single strategy, which consisted in trying to ruin the enemy by killing or maiming as many of his peasants and destroying as many...
The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never...
The impetus of existing plans is always stronger than the impulse to change. The Kaiser could not change Moltke’s plan nor could Kitchener alter Henry Wilson’s nor Lanrezac alter Joffre’s.
The castle’s predecessor, the Roman villa, had been unfortified, depending on Roman law and the Roman legions for its ramparts.
Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor improved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they had suffered. God’s purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had...
Regulations, he would say, are all very well for drill but in the hour of danger they are no more use.… You have to learn to think. To think meant to give room for freedom of initiative, for the impon...
Peruzzi, secured on expected revenue from the wool tax. When this brought in too little and Edward could not repay, the drain on the Italian companies bankrupted them. The Peruzzi failed in 1343, the...
It is a peculiar habit of Christianity to conceive the most compassionate and forgiving divinities and use them to sponsor atrocity.
In this atmosphere of doubt why was the extreme risk approved? Partly because exasperation at the failure of all her efforts at intimidation had led to an all-or-nothing state of mind and a helpless y...
For a hundred years the Ottoman Empire, called the Sick Man of Europe, had been considered moribund by the hovering European powers who were waiting to fall upon the carcass.
Canada was regarded as a hostage to restrain Britain,
Believing themselves superior in soul, in strength, in energy, industry, and national virtue, Germans felt they deserved the dominion of Europe.
Belgium’s declared intention to fight was, the Germans believed, no more than the rage of dreaming sheep—in the words a Prussian statesman once applied to his domestic opponents.
A regular method was the levy for a crusade, which allowed ecclesiastical income within each country to be taxed by its king, who soon came to regard it as a right.
The fief of Coucy from the Church; it was now held directly of the King, and its seigneur paid homage only to the King’s person.